A Tale of Two Priorities

Recently, I drove to a family’s home for a best-fit colleges meeting with their son. I gather both the student and parents together for the occasion. I had spent weeks building a thoughtful college list around his goals, personality, maturity level, academic profile, and long-term aspirations. When I arrived, I discovered he had two finals the next day: Calculus and Latin. The family still wanted to proceed with the meeting.

I declined.

Not because the meeting wasn’t important. It was. But because at that moment, the priorities were wrong.

As college counselors, independent consultants, coaches, and advisors, we often talk about advocating for students. But advocacy can become blurry when emotions, prestige, timelines, and parental anxiety enter the room.

Sometimes families believe advocacy means:

• getting into the most impressive college

• maximizing opportunities

• pushing harder

• or staying “on schedule”

But sometimes advocacy is much quieter than that. Sometimes advocacy means saying, "Go study for your finals.” The student wasn’t upset about the conflict. In fact, he seemed indifferent either way. The parents, understandably embarrassed, wanted to continue. But what mattered most in that moment wasn’t the college list; it was learning priorities. Not because Calculus and Latin finals determine a life outcome. They don’t. But because adulthood is built through repeated decisions about what comes first.

And increasingly, I find that much of my work is not simply helping students get into college. It’s helping students slowly become capable of managing adulthood itself. Aren't fully formed adults masterful at responsibility, follow-through, communication, ownership, and decision-making? Well, the truth is, we're all half-baked, regardless of our age. If we're lucky, we get better at these things with time. The irony is that many students pursuing ambitious futures are still far from finished at seventeen years old. That’s normal. In fact, it’s expected.

That evening tested my values, my real purpose in why I do what I do. At the beginning, when working with a new family, I always give the speech. "School work comes first! College Driven will NEVER be the reason why you do poorly in a class, on a test, with a project. If you ever need to reschedule a meeting for academics, DO IT!" I stuck with that message that evening, despite the long drive to the client's home (you've seen gas prices, right?). But insisting on rescheduling the meeting focused on my priority, the student. First, it protected his academics. Second, it justified the integrity and seriousness of the work I do for clients. See, the way I work this portion of my program isn't just about going over a carefully curated college list. The list is not the work; the reasoning is the work. The developmental insight is the work. The fit-analysis, the future-build, that's the work. I AM NOT a transactional admissions consultant. I care deeply about every student and family I work with, and that, instead, makes me a developmental advisor, a strategist, a mentor, and an advocate. If I'm lucky, by the time that enrollment deposit is paid, a friend.

The parents insisted I go on with the meeting. They were prioritizing convenience and emotional urgency. This process matters enough that we do it correctly. As I left, I contemplated that it also proves that all of these bits and pieces in the student's life work together to bring him to his best-fit colleges, including doing well on tests!

The role of a counselor is not merely to open doors; it is to help students develop into people capable of walking through them successfully. That sometimes requires uncomfortable moments. The family’s priority that evening was understandable, “We’re already here. Let’s just continue.” But my priority had to be different. Because if college counseling becomes the reason a student underperforms academically, then the process itself has lost perspective.

No college list matters more than the habits that eventually allow a student to thrive once they arrive there. In the end, the most important lesson that evening wasn’t, “Go study.” It was, “Learn what deserves your full attention first.”

One day, this student will need to make those decisions on his own without a parent, without a counselor, without someone redirecting him. That’s the real goal. Not just college admission. Adulthood. Many of us are still working on it decades later from seventeen.